HERCULES MIM-14, MIM-14A, MIM-14B

HISTORY

Development of the Nike Hercules took place
in the early 1950s and deployment commenced in 1958. A total of 145 missile
batteries were deployed. Most of these were converted Nike Ajax units.
Deactivation of Nike Hercules batteries in the United States commenced in the
early 1970s and was completed by 1975, with the exception of batteries
remaining in Alaska and Florida. These batteries were deactivated in the late
1970s. Foreign countries, mainly NATO allies, deployed this system as well.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Length

41 ft. with booster

Diameter

31.5 inches

Wingspan

6 ft. 2 in.

Weight

10,710 pounds with booster

Booster Fuel

Solid propellant

Sustainer Motor

Solid propellant

Range

Over 75 miles

Speed

Mach 3.65 (2707 mph)

Maximum Altitude

100,000 ft.*

Guidance

Command guidance from ground installations

*Many web sites contain inaccurate information
concerning the maximum intercept altitude for the Nike Hercules. They list the maximum
intercept
altitude as being 150,000 feet. This is incorrect. The maximum intercept altitude of the
Nike Hercules is 100,000 feet. Please refer to page 13
of TM 9-1400-250-10/2.

WARHEADS

High Explosive:

T45 - 625 pound fragmentation

Nuclear:

Initial deployment was with the W-7 warhead in two
variants; X1 and X2 with yields of 2 - 40 Kt. The W-7 was soon to be replaced
with the W-31.

W31 deployed in 3 yields:2kt (M-22), 20kt. (M-97), and 40kt (M-23).

10 KT air burst with a Hercules

W31 was a boosted fission weapon

Boosting

The simplest way to utilize fusion is to put a mixture of
deuterium
and tritium
inside the hollow core of an implosion style
plutonium
pit (which usually requires an external neutron generator mounted outside of it
rather than the initiator in the core as in the earliest weapons). When the
imploding fission chain reaction brings the fusion fuel to a sufficient
pressure, a deuterium-tritium fusion reaction occurs and releases a large number
of energetic neutrons into the surrounding fissile material. This increases the
rate of burn of the fissile material and so more is consumed before the pit
disintegrates. The efficiency (and therefore yield) of a pure fission bomb can
be doubled (from about 20% to about 40% in an efficient design) through the use
of a fusion boosted core, with very little increase in the size and weight of
the device. The amount of energy released through fusion is only around 1% of
the energy from fission, so the fusion chiefly increases the fission efficiency
by providing a burst of additional neutrons.

Boosting is typically done with a D/T mixture in gas form which is pumped
into the core during the arming sequence from an exterior reservoir. Tritium has
a short half life (12.3 years), is very expensive and is very chemically
reactive with uranium and plutonium. Having the tritium reservoir outside of the
bomb allows easy replenishment and removal of waste Helium-3 without having to
take the bomb core apart. (Theoretically, there are ways a solid hydride or a
D/T liquid could be used instead, but the use of gas is almost universal.)

Fusion boosting provides two strategic benefits. The first is that it obviously allows weapons to be made much smaller, lighter, and use less fissile
material for a given yield, making them cheaper to build and deliver. The second
benefit is that it can be used to render weapons immune to radiation
interference (RI). It was discovered in the mid-1950s that plutonium pits
would be particularly susceptible to partial pre-detonation if exposed to the
intense radiation of a nearby nuclear explosion (electronics might also be
damaged, but this was a separate issue). RI was a particular problem before
effective early warning
radar systems
because a
first
strike attack might make retaliatory weapons useless. Boosting can reduce
the amount of plutonium needed in a weapon to below the quantity which would be
vulnerable to this effect.

While this technique, sometimes known as "gas boosting," uses fusion — the
reaction associated with the so-called “hydrogen bomb” — it is still seen as
simply boosting a "fission" bomb. In fact, fusion boosting is very common and
used in most modern weapons, including the fission primaries in most
thermonuclear weapons.

CONTRACTORS

The missile was constructed by Douglas
Aircraft in California.
The boosters were constructed by the Hercules Powder
Company Radford Arsenal, Virginia.
The sustainer motor was constructed by Thiokol
Chemical Corporation.The guidance system was manufactured by Western Electric.